May 20, 2009

The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part II

Communism, and its more liberal offspring, Socialism, appeal to the young because it is superficially more fair than Capitalism. The Utopianism inherent in Socialism appeals to those who feel that life is unfair and that it should be more fair. What child hasn't, at one time or another, uttered that immortal phrase that so many parents have so much troubling resisting, "Its not fair!" By the time the youngster begins to support him or herself, in modern Western cultures usually by the age of 30 or 40 (pardon the mild hyperbole, though there are efforts afoot to increase that age to never) they begin to recognize that the world is, in fact, not fair. The Universe does not care if you are a good person or a bad person (leaving religion out of the mix) but only whether or not you can support yourself and those who depend upon you. Modern liberal capitalist states have become so incredibly wealthy over the last century that we can now afford to support a growing dependency cohort which naturally evokes the infantile wish among the dependent to be treated more fairly, ie, that to each according to his needs should be the rule. The upshot is that there is an inherent tension in our society between those who pay and those who are dependent. This can and does create cognitive dissonance among those who have incorporated the ethos of Socialist compassion without spending time and energy understanding the far greater moral imperative of personal responsibility and freedom (two inextricable values.)

The last century's grand experiments in Communism and Socialism led to the impoverishment of millions, authoritarian and totalitarian rule and the deaths of millions. History has rendered its verdict and Communism and Socialism have failed. This has led to a crisis for the Left.

Richard Landes discussed David Thompson's interview with Stephen Hicks at the Augean Stables and his comments are illuminating. He first points out some of the value of PoMo and then follows with some of the contradictions at its core: [All emphasis mine- SW]

The rejection of the “objective” is a reasonable linguistic move: language cannot possibly be transparent on reality, especially the reality of human experiences. Even if something “really did happen,” there’s no way to reduce it to verbal formulae, no way for verbal formulae to somehow lock on to the objective reality at which it points. Epistemologically, it’s possible to push it all the way to radical doubt — we can’t know what we can’t know.

One of the more interesting directions pomo thought takes this axiomatic relativism, is the rejection of the “Grand” or “Meta-Narrative,” the all-encompassing, totalistic narrative that includes, gives order and priority in meaning to the multiplicity of “little narratives” that emerge from any event. Pomos have declared the “death” of the Meta-narrative, apparently feeling that having slain the reigning Meta-Narrative (modern, scientific objectivity), they would not allow a new one to gain hegemony.

All of these ideas are interesting and potentially enormously fruitful. The danger I find most pervasive though, is in the lack of understanding and appreciation that post-modernists have for their exegetical freedom. Not realizing that in most societies in most parts of the world for most of history no one, not even the most privileged figures had anything remotely resembling their freedom to interpret and criticize and even reinvent the meaning of the culture’s major texts. As a result, they tend to abuse their freedom, decoupling the key pair of freedom and discipline for an extraordinarily self-indulgent display of solepsistic “creations.”

Indeed, in their eagerness to flaunt their freedom, the unconsciously replicate the ancestors they thought they had slain, those Meta-Narrative driven figures like Hegel and Vico, who saw in history the inexorable march of freedom. And yet, unlike earlier heroes in the heroic narrative — Washington’s refusal to become king comes to mind — they fail to appreciate either the gift they’ve inherited, or the audience to which they, as the culture’s interpreters, are responsible. Alas for us.

After that introduction Richard addresses the interview and remarks upon the use of PoMo to obfuscate the failure of the Left's ideology:

In millennial studies jargon that’s cogntive dissonance at recognizing (and denying) the failure of one’s outrageously hopeful expectations, at the horror of witnessing the God that failed.

Here, rather than acknowledge that the failure of expectations was due to a misreading of human nature, we have people throwing out the very effort to accurately read the world of humans.

Please read the whole thing; it helps clarify how the Left's alliance with Islamism is rationalized and the ways in which our public intellectuals entertain the most convoluted mental gymnastics in order to justify their support of the insupportable. I highlighted certain passages to underscore the point that the failures of Communism stem from the shortcomings (and glories) of human nature. It is the human Psyche, including the Psyche of those on the Left, that dooms Communism. The theory is perfect; the fault lies within our all too human desire for more than just fairness. We also desire freedom and we desire more. Capitalism, by harnessing human nature, makes a virtue of necessity; Communism pretends that if only enough force is used and enough counter-revolutionaries are destroyed, that Utopia will prevail. It cannot work because even the "vanguard of the revolution" is composed of fallible human beings. (This is, of course, the same reason a Caliphate will never be reinstituted by the Islamists; they are human and contain more than their share of fallibility.)

The failure of Communism has Millennial implications for the Left. There can be no Left if they admit or accept that their ideology has failed. The adoption of the PoMo narrative represents a desperate attempt to retain their theory in the face of reality. Professor Landes, as noted, is an expert on Millennial movements and he makes an extremely strong case that the Left is reacting as if their grand edifice has failed and they need to deny that intolerable reality.

In a key point in Richard's post, he first offers this quote from the Stephen Hicks interview:

SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities.

One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism - you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this - I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation.” Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you - you just let ‘er rip.

Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions, for its “subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life.” And it is only that great subject, and the aspirations it generates, that can lead, Eagleton insists, to “a radical transformation of what we say and do.”

I like the image of creation as defecation. It’s as if, somehow, the process of digesting meaning went from chewing one’s cud and producing life-giving milk, to sucking the nutrients out of the text and crapping all over your readers.

"Creation as defecation" is a quintessential Narcissistic defensive maneuver; it is a core concept of pathological Narcissism. It is the human psyche that defeats Utopian movements and the intersection of PoMo, the Left and Pathological Narcissism is an organic development which I will further explore in my next post in this series.

Comments

Communism, and its more liberal offspring, Socialism, appeal to the young because it is superficially more fair than Capitalism. The Utopianism inherent in Socialism appeals to those who feel that life is unfair and that it should be more fair. What child hasn't, at one time or another, uttered that immortal phrase that so many parents have so much troubling resisting, "Its not fair!" By the time the youngster begins to support him or herself, in modern Western cultures usually by the age of 30 or 40 (pardon the mild hyperbole, though there are efforts afoot to increase that age to never) they begin to recognize that the world is, in fact, not fair. The Universe does not care if you are a good person or a bad person (leaving religion out of the mix) but only whether or not you can support yourself and those who depend upon you. Modern liberal capitalist states have become so incredibly wealthy over the last century that we can now afford to support a growing dependency cohort which naturally evokes the infantile wish among the dependent to be treated more fairly, ie, that to each according to his needs should be the rule. The upshot is that there is an inherent tension in our society between those who pay and those who are dependent. This can and does create cognitive dissonance among those who have incorporated the ethos of Socialist compassion without spending time and energy understanding the far greater moral imperative of personal responsibility and freedom (two inextricable values.)

The last century's grand experiments in Communism and Socialism led to the impoverishment of millions, authoritarian and totalitarian rule and the deaths of millions. History has rendered its verdict and Communism and Socialism have failed. This has led to a crisis for the Left.

Richard Landes discussed David Thompson's interview with Stephen Hicks at the Augean Stables and his comments are illuminating. He first points out some of the value of PoMo and then follows with some of the contradictions at its core: [All emphasis mine- SW]

The rejection of the “objective” is a reasonable linguistic move: language cannot possibly be transparent on reality, especially the reality of human experiences. Even if something “really did happen,” there’s no way to reduce it to verbal formulae, no way for verbal formulae to somehow lock on to the objective reality at which it points. Epistemologically, it’s possible to push it all the way to radical doubt — we can’t know what we can’t know.

One of the more interesting directions pomo thought takes this axiomatic relativism, is the rejection of the “Grand” or “Meta-Narrative,” the all-encompassing, totalistic narrative that includes, gives order and priority in meaning to the multiplicity of “little narratives” that emerge from any event. Pomos have declared the “death” of the Meta-narrative, apparently feeling that having slain the reigning Meta-Narrative (modern, scientific objectivity), they would not allow a new one to gain hegemony.

All of these ideas are interesting and potentially enormously fruitful. The danger I find most pervasive though, is in the lack of understanding and appreciation that post-modernists have for their exegetical freedom. Not realizing that in most societies in most parts of the world for most of history no one, not even the most privileged figures had anything remotely resembling their freedom to interpret and criticize and even reinvent the meaning of the culture’s major texts. As a result, they tend to abuse their freedom, decoupling the key pair of freedom and discipline for an extraordinarily self-indulgent display of solepsistic “creations.”

Indeed, in their eagerness to flaunt their freedom, the unconsciously replicate the ancestors they thought they had slain, those Meta-Narrative driven figures like Hegel and Vico, who saw in history the inexorable march of freedom. And yet, unlike earlier heroes in the heroic narrative — Washington’s refusal to become king comes to mind — they fail to appreciate either the gift they’ve inherited, or the audience to which they, as the culture’s interpreters, are responsible. Alas for us.

After that introduction Richard addresses the interview and remarks upon the use of PoMo to obfuscate the failure of the Left's ideology:

In millennial studies jargon that’s cogntive dissonance at recognizing (and denying) the failure of one’s outrageously hopeful expectations, at the horror of witnessing the God that failed.

Here, rather than acknowledge that the failure of expectations was due to a misreading of human nature, we have people throwing out the very effort to accurately read the world of humans.

Please read the whole thing; it helps clarify how the Left's alliance with Islamism is rationalized and the ways in which our public intellectuals entertain the most convoluted mental gymnastics in order to justify their support of the insupportable. I highlighted certain passages to underscore the point that the failures of Communism stem from the shortcomings (and glories) of human nature. It is the human Psyche, including the Psyche of those on the Left, that dooms Communism. The theory is perfect; the fault lies within our all too human desire for more than just fairness. We also desire freedom and we desire more. Capitalism, by harnessing human nature, makes a virtue of necessity; Communism pretends that if only enough force is used and enough counter-revolutionaries are destroyed, that Utopia will prevail. It cannot work because even the "vanguard of the revolution" is composed of fallible human beings. (This is, of course, the same reason a Caliphate will never be reinstituted by the Islamists; they are human and contain more than their share of fallibility.)

The failure of Communism has Millennial implications for the Left. There can be no Left if they admit or accept that their ideology has failed. The adoption of the PoMo narrative represents a desperate attempt to retain their theory in the face of reality. Professor Landes, as noted, is an expert on Millennial movements and he makes an extremely strong case that the Left is reacting as if their grand edifice has failed and they need to deny that intolerable reality.

In a key point in Richard's post, he first offers this quote from the Stephen Hicks interview:

SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities.

One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism - you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this - I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation.” Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you - you just let ‘er rip.

Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions, for its “subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life.” And it is only that great subject, and the aspirations it generates, that can lead, Eagleton insists, to “a radical transformation of what we say and do.”

I like the image of creation as defecation. It’s as if, somehow, the process of digesting meaning went from chewing one’s cud and producing life-giving milk, to sucking the nutrients out of the text and crapping all over your readers.

"Creation as defecation" is a quintessential Narcissistic defensive maneuver; it is a core concept of pathological Narcissism. It is the human psyche that defeats Utopian movements and the intersection of PoMo, the Left and Pathological Narcissism is an organic development which I will further explore in my next post in this series.